Luxembourg holiday update #1

Once you have mastered dining out as a vegan, the next step to conquer is travelling as a vegan.

Or, looking at things (and by things I mean my life) from another angle, once you have mastered healthy (ish) eating as an active vegan, you need to master healthy (ish) eating when sitting around in your childhood home where time is plentiful and food is delicious. And whenever I talk about eating, whether healthy or not (or “ish”), it always includes treats.

So bearing in mind that there is always a vast amount of food of all types when I come home, what do I choose to eat when I am lazing around not doing very much, and (still) vegan?

This is by no means a prescription of what to eat (I think that’ll become pretty obvious once you start reading…), but I don’t see many vegan blog posts out there about what people eat when they are sitting around doing nothing, surrounded by all the food they could possibly want. We know what to eat to lose weight, to gain weight, to treat ourselves, to stick to the health guidelines, when we want to splash out or when we want to stick to a budget, but never really what we could choose to eat when we literally can choose whatever we want without time or budget restrictions. Also since I am not really doing anything but eating these days, I wouldn’t really have much else to write about.

So this morning I started the day with a scoop of MyProtein Vegan Blend with a bit of soy milk, a cup of green tea, and a multivitamin. A little later, once the digestive system had kicked into gear, I had a sliced banana with cinnamon, a dollop of smooth Rapunzel salted peanut butter, and plain soy yoghurt. That happened to be the only peanut butter we had in the fridge, or I never would have picked salted to go with that combination of food, but actually it worked remarkably well!

I could still feel a gnawing little gap somewhere below my ribcage, so before wandering out I grabbed a clementine and then realised that Seed&Bean Coconut and Raspberrychocolate was what I needed, and that totally hit the spot.

We wandered into town for a look around the Christmas market, then sat down in La Table du Pain for lunch as I know they have a vegan-friendly sandwich there. I had my faithful “Olive Pâté” tartine; 4 slices of homemade wholemeal bread thickly spread with a rich salty green olive tapenade and topped with a slice of tomato. A filling and hearty vegan lunch for €5.90… I forgot my camera but Ben took a picture, so watch this space as I will update it – that open sandwich was a work of art.

Just had another clementine with a cup of Mango & Gingergreen tea, as well as an apple with almond spreadand now looking forward to my mum’s famous mushroom, sage and orange risotto tonight. If I get some nice photos I will share a recipe, because it really is incredible and perfect for winter nights!

Update

I do like to keep my promises, and I really think everyone should try this risotto, just looking at it feels like getting a big warm hug:

I was going to provide a recipe, but it’s very long, and anyway it’s probably worth getting Patricia Wells‘ cookbook Trattoria – it’s no vegan cookbook but gives some really nice simple pasta, pizza, and risotto dishes which can easily be veganised. For this Orange, Sage and Mushroom risotto my mum simply used soy margarine instead of butter – she also inverted the butter-to-oil ration, using more olive oil than margarine.

Although I think everyone should have at least one vegan cookbook (and Ben has just informed me that there are 33 vegan cookbooks on Amazon.com, and 129 on GoodReads.com… so definitely make sure you get yourself one), I do always enjoy veganising non-vegan recipes. Maybe it’s just for the challenge, but it’s also useful to have some recipes on standby for which you can get ingredients from pretty much anywhere and which won’t push non-vegans too far out of their comfort-food-zone should you be cooking for them.

And a lovely salad with raspberry dressing to go with it (my mum makes wonderful salads, but anything tastes good from this salad bowl):

Toasted sunflower seeds make such a difference… And a lovely raspberry vinaigrette to go with the zesty tangy theme of the evening.